NLP: How the Mind Was Tempered
An Adjustable Wrench: A Simple Way to Protect Your Mind
There’s a certain feature of our lives: everything that’s invented sooner or later becomes a tool or a commodity. The Internet was invented as a free global network, and now almost a third of all global transactions happen online. Yoga, a special meditation system from India, is now as common in big cities as bars. And as for the sweet dream of getting into someone’s mind and making them obey you—well, that’s the essence of NLP, or Neuro-Linguistic Programming.
The Origins of NLP
USA, 1970s. Richard Bandler, John Grinder, and Frank Pucelik, under the guidance of Gregory Bateson (an anthropologist, sociologist, cyberneticist, and professor at the University of California), began the first studies of successful psychotherapists’ methods. NLP was born as a way to record and apply effective techniques for interacting with patients. The first steps involved modeling the behavior of Fritz Perls (Gestalt therapy), Virginia Satir (family therapy), and Milton Erickson (Ericksonian hypnosis)—some of the most successful healers of the human soul at the time.
Later, influenced by New Age philosophy, which promoted expanding the potential of the human mind, NLP became an independent system. The idea was that modeling could be useful not just for therapists, but in everyday life as well.
The founders developed a meta-model—a general model of human behavior and reactions to changes in the world. The main method was deep immersion, where the observer would “wear the mask” of another person, trying to fully describe their sensations, feelings, thoughts, and possible reactions. This was often done through hypnosis.
By the 1980s, NLP had become a brand, and its founders were suing each other over copyrights. By then, the system was well-publicized, with several branches using different training methods, and many people had experienced its influence. But what is it based on?
My Language Is My Sword
NLP is based on a simple but interesting idea: we think in language. Our consciousness operates exclusively in a symbolic field. Information can be visual, tactile, or sensory, but our brain still interprets it as a set of symbols (like computer encoding) directly tied to language. This connection is two-way, so language directly affects consciousness.
But people are different. How do you bring people’s minds to a common denominator? Here comes the second core principle of NLP: everyone has their own reality. We perceive almost everything subjectively, through the prism of our own symbols. There’s no objective information about reality—we live in our own illusions. To manipulate someone, you need to enter their reality, understand it, and become part of it.
All the illusions we live in are built on language, so language can open almost any fortress. The creators of NLP even claimed they could implant various feelings toward themselves in someone’s mind—from panic and fear to adoration and reverence.
Control and Dominate
So, how can these techniques be used? At seminars and trainings, attendees are promised near-world domination; books written in this style aggressively promise cures for all problems, along with career, personal, and sports success.
Let’s start with business. One of the brightest examples of NLP technology is “value management.” This method is designed for company managers who need to build an effective team.
The first step is creating regulations—instructions covering all professional activities. This makes employees predictable, and rebels are tamed with fines and firings. But that’s not enough; people can follow instructions but still fight or see no meaning in their work. So, concepts like “mission” or “business goal” are developed to explain what people are doing besides making money.
Usually, this is a distant, idealistic goal—like “providing the population with tasty and healthy food” for a company selling Brussels sprouts, even if it’s overpriced and of questionable quality. Various trainings and team-building activities are held to create a united community that believes in its mission.
Special trainers work to instill attitudes that align with company needs and suppress internal conflicts. Since people are naturally quarrelsome, these problems are mostly suppressed, which can lead to serious mental health issues, such as increased aggression at home or substance abuse.
Think how convenient this is! To make an employee work overtime, you could pay them, but if they believe in the company’s great mission, they might do it for free. Want people to stop slacking off? Brainwash them and let them work themselves to exhaustion—no need to pay extra.
Of course, employees can take it out on customers. Take personal sales in a big electronics store. NLP techniques involve a multi-step process of establishing psychological, verbal, and nonverbal contact, culminating in “rapport”—a sense of trust and closeness. Some trainers say the ideal is when the “victim” feels like they’re talking to themselves.
Why do this? To sell someone an expensive, unnecessary item. If they need it, they’ll buy it themselves. But if you need to get their money by any means (and salespeople are often under strict sales plans and threats of penalties), you have to “push” products. This is sometimes called “black magic sales.”
You literally force someone to spend money on something they don’t need, like convincing a customer to buy expensive training for using Android, which is already designed to be user-friendly for everyone.
Similar techniques are used in business negotiations, breaking down a person’s psychological defenses and imposing your opinion.
NLP in Everyday Life and Beyond
Business is just one area; there are many other uses for NLP. For example, it’s tried in medicine.
Want to quit smoking? Lose weight? Since all problems start in the mind, the treatment targets your consciousness. It’s not really treatment, but something between hypnosis and self-suggestion, where the patient voluntarily allows their mind to be “washed” (or does it themselves using guides), implanting certain attitudes. You might not stop wanting to smoke, and your body won’t lose its nicotine addiction, but psychologically you can resist the urge. However, this isn’t always safe.
For example, quitting smoking after age 60 can cause serious heart problems, as the body is used to nicotine and withdrawal can be tough. The suppressed addiction may show up elsewhere—you might start overeating, leading to obesity and related mental and physical health issues.
But medicine isn’t everything! Many people dream of improving their personal lives with little effort. Everyone knows about “pickup” techniques, and many believe any man can become a macho. Maybe, but it takes a lot of effort, from spending money on your appearance to buying status items that attract women. The linguistic aspect of control is just part of the attack. Like tanks are useless without air support, you won’t get to start a conversation if you look like a scarecrow.
NLP-pickup advertising talks a lot about hypnosis and offers various methods, from sending coded messages to direct hypnosis. These techniques only work in three cases: if the user is a psychology expert (therapist, professional hypnotist, etc.), if the subject is a bodybuilder with a real Rolex and Bentley, or if the target’s brain isn’t much different from a monkey’s.
This means all NLP seduction techniques are a rigid sequence of actions based on basic psychological models. They’re imperative—you pressure the person. Someone with simple, obvious reactions will fall for it, but an intellectually developed person with cognitive abilities will likely spot these crude attempts, and if you’re lucky, just ignore you instead of laughing in your face.
There’s also “combat NLP,” a mysterious and controversial area. Many ads describe it as aggressive manipulation aimed at subjugating or harming someone’s psyche. In extreme situations, you can supposedly use conversation to cause someone pain or prevent them from acting aggressively toward you, or resist their attempts to control you.
In street confrontations, the victim often doesn’t have time to speak before being attacked. Against a “combat NLP” practitioner, the “hit with a 32×44 wrench to the head” technique works well, disabling their main weapon—their speech.
As for resisting recruitment and manipulation, this is where these techniques are useful—people are taught to recognize common patterns of submission, manipulation, and pressure, which many use unconsciously. For example, how to resist a wife who uses emotional manipulation by bursting into tears at the slightest provocation.
But as usual, advertising convinces us of our invincibility and uniqueness—just take the course and pay the money.
Conclusions and Criticism
Like any mental control technique, NLP isn’t a magic wand that bends the world to your will. In the hands of someone with knowledge, experience, and skill, it can be effective in many areas, from medicine and psychotherapy to sales.
However, this tool isn’t self-sufficient (a shovel won’t dig a garden by itself) and isn’t applicable everywhere. Don’t believe ads promising you the world after a couple of trainings. The human mind can’t be boxed in—it’s a little-studied, flexible, and dynamic space that’s always changing. And that’s just the conscious mind, not even touching the unconscious, which only the bravest psychonauts dare to explore.
No phenomenon can be judged unambiguously, but perhaps the most important thing in life is to critically evaluate reality and not take it on faith. Then no NLP adept will control you. And if all else fails, carry an adjustable wrench. That always helps.
NLP, like any method, isn’t good or bad. It’s like a gun—it depends on whose hands it’s in and how it’s used. Plus, any such activity is surrounded by myths that make it hard to understand what it really is. So here’s a list of what not to do with this stuff.
Myths About NLP
- NLP doesn’t give you absolute power over people. You can’t manipulate someone like a puppet and make them fully obey your will. Like any method of interacting with the mind, NLP works within existing behavioral patterns, so you can’t make someone jump out a window or give you all their savings unless they’re already inclined to do so.
- NLP isn’t a universal method. Good trainers provide a broad base of knowledge in related fields (psychology, clinical psychotherapy, neurophysiology, etc.), because to use these technologies effectively, you need to be well-educated and knowledgeable, not just know behavioral algorithms but also understand the mind as a whole.
- Manipulating someone’s mind doesn’t always benefit the manipulator. For example, if you make a customer buy something they don’t need, you definitely won’t see them in your store again, no matter how much you mess with their mind.
- Manipulative techniques (not just NLP) are used everywhere in business, from negotiations to boss-employee interactions. Over time, most business participants develop a certain immunity to manipulation, conscious or not. Only highly qualified specialists can achieve 100% results; people who attend a couple of seminars mostly pay for self-confidence.
- Manipulation must consider the interests of the target, especially in corporate ideology. Many business owners dream of creating a slave system by implanting certain attitudes in employees. This approach is fundamentally wrong, as all reasonably intelligent workers will immediately leave, and the remaining staff will cause the business to collapse—unless it’s a stone quarry.
- The human mind is very flexible and dynamic. So, influence algorithms are just the first step to real interaction. “Spells” sold as universal thinking schemes work in a very limited field, and not always. NLP courses that only teach algorithms are basically useless.
- NLP has its own field of application. All “combat” techniques (as resistance to violence, not aggressive business negotiation methods) and “consciousness expansion” are just scams hiding behind a famous brand, trying to squeeze money from the “quasi-occult” crowd.